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1. Romanticism & Revolution

          OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
          For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
          Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
          Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
          But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
          In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
          Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
          The attraction of a country in romance!
          When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
          When most intent on making of herself
          A prime Enchantress--to assist the work,
          Which then was going forward in her name!
          Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
          The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
          (As at some moment might not be unfelt
          Among the bowers of paradise itself)
          The budding rose above the rose full blown.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude, XI, 105-44.

2. Romantic Period: 1785-1830

1757: Blake born

1770: Wordsworth born

1772: Coleridge born

1788: Byron born

1789-1815: Revolutionary and Napoleonic period in France

1789: The Revolution begins with the assembly of the States-General in May and the storming of the Bastille on July 14.

1792: Shelley born

1793: King Louis XVI executed: England joins the alliance against France.

1793-94: The Reign of Terror under Robespierre.

1795: Keats born

1804: Napoleon crowned emperor.-

1815: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo

1821: Keats died

1822: Shelley died

1824: Byron died

1827: Blake died

1834: Coleridge died

1850: Wordsworth died

3. A Painting from the Romantic Period: "Liberty leading the People"

A painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman personifying the concept and the goddess of Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolour flag, which remains France's national flag – in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne